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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23854987">When I Was Older</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffersonhairpin/pseuds/jeffersonhairpin'>jeffersonhairpin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Elio never recovered basically, Heavy Angst, I'm quite proud of it please read, Inspired by Music, M/M, poetic injustice, poetic?, unreality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:35:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,534</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23854987</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffersonhairpin/pseuds/jeffersonhairpin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"When I was older</em>
  <br/>
  <em>I was a sailor</em>
  <br/>
  <em>On an open sea</em>
</p><p> <em>But now I'm underwater</em><br/><em>And my skin is paler</em><br/><em>Than it should ever be"</em></p><p> <br/>--------</p><p>Still stuck in that summer, fixated and drifting, Elio lies in his and Oliver's bed years later and thinks about what he's had and lost. Inspired by how "When I Was Older" felt when I listened to it.</p><p>Please read, I'm really proud of it</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Oliver/Elio Perlman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>When I Was Older</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This surprised me today. It's very 'unreality', more poetic than narrative, not supposed to necessarily be taken as literal... </p><p>It's pretty important to at least have heard <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I4fD49Gbck">"When I Was Older"</a> by Billie Eilish before listening, or better yet during, if the lyrics aren't too distracting. I'm generally not a huge fan of a lot of her music but this song is beautiful. It reminds me of Sailor Moon and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9yXcLs0T6Q">The Spoken Word</a> by AFI (not necessarily the song, but the poem).</p><p>There are some references that are too early for 'a few years' on, but tbh I imagine this <em>decades</em> into the future with an Elio who is still young, so stuck that his body doesn't even age, so it's okay I guess</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Elio has barely left his bed in weeks.</p><p>Hasn’t bothered to eat, nor to shower…</p><p>It’s not like there’s anyone around to care if he does or does not bathe.</p><p>There’s a painting on the wall that wasn’t there when Oliver was here so long ago; when Elio lived his life instead of just waiting. It’s a beach scene from 1910, all bright sun on white sand, parasols and red cheeks… Laughing children and smiling mothers…</p><p>The warmth of the colours has been taken away by the cool light of the cold day. The painting is a perfect reflection of Elio, staring back at him; he used to be warm and happy too, until the sun went away.</p><p>Elio is lying in <em>their</em> bed but he’s never felt further away from that summer, <em>the</em> summer…</p><p>The day is dim but no lights are on, if the power is even still working – does anything reach here anymore? Is this place not separate from everything else? There hasn’t been hot water for weeks…</p><p>A cool winter breeze comes in through a window that should really be shut, but won’t be. No one is around for miles and Elio isn’t going to move. He’s only moved to move spirits in and out of his body in the last few weeks, his head pounding and spinning.</p><p>It’s eerily silent but for the breeze. No one lives here anymore – not Mafalda, not his parents, not even <em>Elio,</em> really… </p><p>It’s not okay, but lying on his side, half his face buried into the mattress… it just is.</p><p><em>He</em> just is. He doesn’t do. He doesn’t say. He just is. </p><p>He feels hollow, he supposes, swallowing around a dry throat. Swallowing, that’s something he does, and breathing, sort of. He stares, half seeing, half not. </p><p>He thinks, sometimes – or more, he remembers. </p><p>Or more, he tries to remember.</p><p>But every time he recalls that summer it seems a little dimmer, a little further away, a little bluer in places where it should be green, or yellow, or red…</p><p>A little further under water every day.</p><p>It’s been years, surely it must be near the bottom by now?</p><p>He tries to recall the sound of Oliver’s laughter but when he thinks he’s caught the tails of it, it slips away again, echoing through his mind like phantom laughter through the marble hallways of an abandoned house. Pristine, and terrible. </p><p>He feels quite like an empty house, an empty mansion with an old ballroom, which used to house sparkling, shining revelries but houses only ghosts and mice now. His ribs are covered in sheets and dust, his heart shrivelled, and stone. He used to house joy in the cavern of his chest, too, but now… it just echoes on.</p><p>Distantly he thinks his chest is the house from Beauty and the Beast, before the girl arrives… or maybe the house from that movie, Jumanji… </p><p>He hasn’t seen a film in a long time, but he thinks maybe if you cut him open it would look like that.</p><p>He closes his eyes, deciding to surrender to sleep, but the moment he does he knows he’s not going to get to sleep. Nothing so sweet as sleep…</p><p>Sometimes he still gets to dream about it, but the longer time has gone on the harder it’s become to remember the exact contours of Oliver’s face, the exact tone of his voice… </p><p>He’s been obsessed, been fixated for so long that if he saw Oliver he isn’t sure he’d recognise him… less of a person now and more of a twisted shadow in Elio’s life.</p><p>He’s so stuck.</p><p>He’s been stuck here since 1983, even when he left, even when he <em>tried</em> to forget. </p><p>The cameras have stopped rolling but he’s still here where Oliver left him, like a forgotten marionette with no one to pull its strings and bring it to life. Perhaps his animator has forgotten him. Or perhaps he’s died?</p><p>Would it help, if Oliver died?</p><p>No, no it wouldn’t. </p><p>Either way, his life has happened. There was a ‘before’, and a ‘during’, and now it’s ‘after’, but he’s still here for some reason. </p><p>Why did life not stop after he watched Oliver get on that train? Perhaps this was just a stop in Oliver’s story but that’s where Elio’s story ended, why did life not just stop there?</p><p>Well. It did. </p><p>But he’s still here, stuck tied to a house that’s as empty and cold and dead as he is while the party continues elsewhere. In other places Elio is sure the cameras continue to roll, but never where he is; never again.</p><p>Wherever he is, he’s here.</p><p>Elio is a ghost still wandering about an amusement park which used to light up every day, but where now not even the birds fly over. A piece of reality broken off from the rest and set adrift, without anchor, without rope, without sail…</p><p>With just Elio.</p><p>Oliver said that some things stay the same only by changing, but Elio has changed nothing, trying to hold onto the last traces of scents and images which have now turned to must and smoke around him. He stays in the same spot in the middle of the bed, hoping against hope that maybe a draft will blow the scent of apricots and sea salt up to him once more…</p><p>But it never does.</p><p>He wonders where Oliver is right now, what he would think of all this, of how twisted and demented Elio has become, how detached from the world, how uncaring and obsessed and—</p><p>Finally, Elio turns to lie on his back looking out through the window to the clouds in the sky. He thinks, distantly, that the wind that rustles the dying leaves is the same one that moves those clouds gently across the sky… Or it seems gentle, but he’s sure from up there it’s so chaotic it’d make his head spin, the wind and the water and the height and… </p><p>It seems gentle though.</p><p>They’re so far away… they don’t know. They’re so far away from all of this.</p><p><em>I wish I could be up there,</em> Elio thinks. <em>I could be a soft cloud, full of so many little water droplets… instead of a hard, porcelain shell with nothing inside of it and chips on all the edges. I was made to be filled, filled by</em> Oliver, <em>but he didn’t want to fill me…</em></p><p>The only thing filling Elio is that echoing laughter, soft piano from another room, hissing words that slur into moans of ecstasy…</p><p>
  <em>What if Oliver walked in right now and told me he wanted me, wanted to fill me, wanted to go back to the start and get it right…</em>
</p><p>No. </p><p>There was a time and a place when they were supposed to be together, but they’re not there anymore. The stop was missed and the story has gone on too long without him. </p><p>
  <em>I was fresh, like ripe fruit, and made and grown for Oliver to enjoy… but Oliver left me up in the attic, and now I am rotten.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He can't eat me now; he’d be sick…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Could I be his friend? Could I be in his life, there when he needed me, away when he didn’t, living off the ecstasy of just being around him? Could he sit me on the mantlepiece, ruined as I am, and just try to ignore the maggots?</em>
</p><p>…No.</p><p>If he could have some of Oliver he would need to have all of him, everything he could taste, see, hear, smell, feel of him... He would have to <em>be</em> Oliver the way he used to be.</p><p>And he can’t have that anymore.</p><p><em>Why do I stay alive,</em> he used to wonder. But he knows why it is he stays, now.</p><p>He stays because someone has to stay to remember it. </p><p>He can’t have what he needs, and he can’t accept anything less; his life is so, wholly pointless... but someone needs to remember, so he stays.</p><p>He’s not sure if he’s even alive <em>to</em> die, or if maybe he died sometime in the night and just never noticed... maybe he’s spent so long living like a ghost that he didn’t even need death to help him lose his body, begin his haunting...</p><p>Turning back onto his side, Elio faces the painting again, his oil reflection, his mocking comfort on this cold, blue day. </p><p>It was probably pretty a long time ago, but it’s been left to its own devices for too long and the colours have faded; dust has collected and the cold light turns it eerie…</p><p>Elio knows exactly how it feels. </p><p>Forgotten.</p><p>He closes his eyes, and he travels in his mind to wherever Oliver might be now, flying over the ocean like a years-dead bird that doesn’t know its flight ended long ago… </p><p>And as his mind travels further and further away, his body begins to give up. His head spins as he lies in their bed, stuck, still, silent, drifting further away from reality every moment…</p><p>No one will find him for months, years, decades…</p><p>If anyone even finds him at all, in such a forgotten place.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I made a blog to link to with all this stuff cos I figured it was probably stupid to make my old one all CMBYN/Timmy stuff, so I'm at <a href="https://jeffersonhairpin.tumblr.com">jeffersonhairpin</a> on tumblr now</p><p>Please leave me a comment, they are my motivation ♥️</p></blockquote></div></div>
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